Chronicle Editor
Meluleki Moyo
LIKELY to be mistaken for our contemporary Gandhis and Luther Kings, if not the biblical wise men by people of little research, they flaunt monopoly over opinions. Engaging them in constructive criticism would definitely be a mammoth task for progressive minds, as the host of these angelic demons, many with skeletons in their closets are singing democratic hymns, shamelessly expressing victimhood with each stanza.
Amid falsehoods, misinformation and exaggeration, the Zimbabwe political arena has on social media recently been characterised with blasts louder than those heard in Lebanon’s Beirut and Somalia’s Mogadishu.
The mayhem, pandemonium and hullabaloo has been more than that witnessed in the United States of America, Burkina Faso and Hong Kong, to mention but a few countries with own problems, added to the devastating effects of the dreadful and exterminating coronavirus.
Propelled by self-interests and, as to be expected, not missing an opportunity to capitalise even from calamities, Zimbabwe’s detractors seem to find joy in confining the country to some protracted socio-economic lockdown.
Seemingly devoid of the proven fact that lies have short legs, the truth is what they abhor the most. Resultantly, together with their ill-informed legion who can’t learn from the past, bullishly and ruthlessly elbow out people of differing views, including factual. In the full glare and multiplicity of the global political optics, they mercilessly drag the motherland down the thorny path towards the political Golgotha.
But who are these?
These are they who, owing to errors of commission and or omission, unfortunately found themselves on the wrong side of the fence. They are power hungry, opportunistic and mostly failed politicians who criticise anything associated with those in the echelons of power, including noble. Some are out to seek relevance, seizing every opportunity to revive their dwindling and almost extinct political fortunes.
As well sailing on the same boat, are disgruntled, bitter fugitives wandering far from home, and with lost ideas. I don’t mean to celebrate their demise lest I face the wrath of nature, but day-in day-out, they throw stones from glass houses of exile, and not for the love of the nation.
This they as well do with an evil intention of destabilising the country, triggering authorities’ reaction, with the aim of drawing international attention and condemnation. Carried away and hoodwinked into recklessness, all we have left of our beloved fellow countrymen misled by Twitter Likes and Retweets, are sorry images of hapless beings in prison garbs. In solitude, apparently full of regret and with fellow keyboard warriors out of sight in the real world, they today yearn for freedom.
Added to these are the purported good Samaritans and lawyers for human rights, but surprisingly with a DNA for atrocities against humanity. It’s quite absurd to hear descendants of the cruel Selous Scouts saying #ZimbabweanLivesMatter.
For the record, 44 years ago when real brutality reigned supreme, the Selous Scouts took about 1 028 Zimbabwean lives, including women and children in cold blood at Nyadzonya, as if they did not matter.
Collectively lost in some political utopia, and existing in a simulacrum of unity yet grossly divided, they today find shelter in a plethora of hashtags including the recently launched #ZimbabweanLivesMatter.
Not getting any better, the bitter political dwarfs are on social media together with a legion of followers, casting long shadows, and thanks to their setting sun.
Briefly and probably for the benefit of those not conversant with the history of hashtags, including the social media carried-aways, the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag came to the fore in 2013 in the United States of America, the so-called mother of all democracies, following a series of attacks on black lives. Some of the perpetrators of such atrocities, like one George Zimmerman were acquitted.
More recently, the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in the same United States revived the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag. Over the years, and as a direct response to the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag, some within the Twitter sphere began using the hashtag #AllLivesMatter, in an apparent demonstration that everything in life matters.
Copied and pasted from the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag, the hashtag is being short-sightedly used by the anti-establishment elements in their relentless efforts to negatively brand the country, and in a very wrong context. Instead, the hashtag should be used to positively brand the country as such would profoundly shape our economic, cultural and political destiny, as well as position Zimbabwe for international competitiveness.
The same hashtag could as well be used in a collective campaign for the removal of sanctions hurting the ordinary Zimbabweans, simply because Zimbabwean lives matter. How they are blinded by euphoria over what they term solidarity from the so-called international celebrities of this sometimes weird world, as well boggles the mind.
Surprisingly, these so-called celebrities are weeping more than the said to be bereaved, and limping more than the said to be injured, and devoid of the real goings own in Zimbabwe, let alone, the country’s geopolitical settings.
Honestly, what does the Ice Cubes of this world know about Zimbabwe?
By the way, Zimbabwe is a sovereign state bounded by the Limpopo and the Zambezi rivers to the south and to the north, respectively. Just like any other country in this world, she has her own political and socio-economic problems, some very serious. Fortunately however, her inhabitants are not docile or passive, but are literate enough to deal with their own affairs, and in amicable ways.
Flashback to the 2008 Global Political Agreement. We have done it before. More importantly, especially to external self-styled messiahs, Zimbabwe is presided over by one constitutionally elected Emmerson Mnangagwa and his Zanu-PF party, mandated to govern up to 2023. In short, Zimbabwe is not some Disneyland!
The vilification campaign has reached worrying levels amid misinformation. Even a handful of some Nyaope boys south of the Limpopo have also joined the ill-informed movement meant to tarnish the country’s image. More worryingly, some of these so-called celebrities have nothing to offer the future generations, even morally.
Kodwa Msindisi (Dear God), what does “Zakes Bantwini” even mean? As well detached from reality, taking advantage of the void left by the defunct and dysfunctional Zimbabwe opposition, and in an apparent display of political immaturity, South Africa’s Julius Malema even went overboard. He called on Pretoria to shut down the Zimbabwean embassy, supposedly as a way of resolving a “crisis” he is not even aware of:
“We call for the removal of the Zimbabwean Embassy in SA until they restore the human rights in that country.”
To be continued
Online Reporter